Asymmetric learning from financial information

Camelia Kuhnen

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The goal of this study is to ask whether investors learn differently from gains (positive news) versus losses (negative news), whether learning performance is better or worse when people are actively investing in a security or passively observing the security’s payoffs, and whether there are personal characteristics that correlate with learning performance. The experimental evidence documented here indicates that the ability to learn from financial information is on average worse in the loss domain, in particular if the investor has personally experienced the prior outcomes of the financial asset considered. Within individual, learning from gains versus losses, or during active versus passive involvement, are not perfectly correlated, indicating that there exists heterogeneity across people with respect to the type of financial information or context to which they are the most sensitive. Learning performance is determined by acquired financial expertise as well as by genetic factors related to memory and cognitive control.

Keywords: financial decision making; learning; gains; losses; genes; COMT; neuroeconomics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D83 G11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-06-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Asymmetric Learning from Financial Information (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:39412

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